


Whispers in the Sand

by Naemi



Category: Cthulhu Mythos - H. P. Lovecraft
Genre: Ambiguity, Angst, Mention of/Implied Tentacle Sex, Mind Control, Other, POV First Person, Xenophilia, questionable state of mind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-15
Updated: 2016-06-15
Packaged: 2018-07-15 08:19:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7214809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naemi/pseuds/Naemi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I croaked out a word: which, I do not know. And <i>he</i>, in a guttural voice and unearthly tongue, said something back that warmed me to the marrow. Like my wife's sweet whispers filled me with utter joy, so did this incomprehensible murmur.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Whispers in the Sand

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sweetcarolanne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetcarolanne/gifts).



> So, phew … I really, really hope this is somewhere along the lines of the things you wanted to see! 
> 
> To me, the most important thing about HPL is his sense of atmosphere, so I wanted to stick to the overall feel of his works as much as possible. Hopefully, that was the right decision in this case =)
> 
> [This toys directly with _The Call of Cthulhu_.]

The words that I'm about to put down trouble me, not for what they are, but for how little rest I find as long as they remain unsaid. They started to slip from my tongue once before, as I drank the cold away with a fellow sailor. Lucky am I that in his bourbon-clouded mind, the man wouldn't listen, but laughed and laughed and never stopped; and how he reminded me of the poor fool Briden and his manic laughter.

That night, I realized I had to tell it all while nobody could ever know, least of all my poor wife. If the story of the creature sleeping under the sea isn't for her ears, then this—Her heart, her poor, sweet heart, could not survive such a terror, such a betrayal. It pains me to think of it, but what happened cannot be undone.

This story begins where the dread that came upon my men and me on that fateful day in March ended. When I had turned the _Alert_ against that creature and fled it, I sat brooding, contemplating, all day and most of the night. For long, my eyes were unfocused, but lastly, they found that strange idol that seemed to look back at me, right into my soul. At some point, despite my fast-beating heart and Briden's mania that resonated through the bowels of the ship, I fell asleep.

My dream returned me to the city in the sea, this abnormality of shape and perception, but now the stones stood on solid land. For hundreds of thousands of acres stretched sand interspersed with sparse bushels of grass. A burning sun hung low, blinding me. As I shaded my eyes, a shadow fell upon me; vast it was, lacking any shape or form I could grasp. In its center, where I stood, it was as black and cold as the deepest chasm within the Mariana Trench. Shivering, I ran my hands over my arms. I turned around, but did not dare to look.

I knew.

I knew it was _him_.

_His_ gaze upon me was like liquid lead: It burned the skin from my flesh, then the flesh from my bones, and turned me to ash that the winds carried away over the plains.

I woke with a start, but for whatever terror grasped my heart, in my mind—a tiny corner of it that I deemed insane and still do—I heard a soothing whisper in a language foreign to the human ear.

Looking about the captain's cabin, I found nothing but darkness, and within, at an arm's length away, that idol: symbol of _him_ , resembling _him_ closely enough and yet not at all. I reached for it and touched the cool stone. As I slid a trembling fingertip along the narrow wings on _his_ back, the voice gave a rumbling sound then faded into a murmur.

I don't know how long I resumed tracing _his_ contours, but the _Alert's_ movement and Briden's unholy laughter lulled me back to sleep somehow.

Back in another dream, I still dared not lift my eyes, dared not move. _His_ shadow, cast upon me, was mighty and alive with a moving darkness, crawling, reaching for me with ghostly fingers when _he_ himself stood absolutely still. A chill raked my skin. In that instant, I thought that _he'd_ come to crush me now, that the monstrosity I'd tried to kill had come to seek vengeance. Alas, _his_ touch was careful, almost gentle, and when I then dared to look at my arm, where I felt a warmth as if of fingertips, I saw … nothing.

My eyes found the creature before me. _He_ looked every bit as malformed as I remembered—a tentacled face and wings and claws and features so macabre that the mind could not translate them—but _he_ stood only at a fraction of the height _he_ 'd shown out on the sea. Rooted to the spot, I slowly looked into the pools of onyx darkness that were _his_ eyes, and I, but a weak human, drowned in them.

I croaked out a word: which, I do not know. And _he,_ in a guttural voice and unearthly tongue, said something back that warmed me to the marrow. Like my wife's sweet whispers filled me with utter joy, so did this incomprehensible murmur.

I was awed. Foolishness has me admit that I was oddly enchanted, also: Before the monster I stood with a fluttering heart and sweaty palms, and where a drop of that sweat pearled off the tip of my index finger and fell on the thirsty earth grew a water out of it. Faster and faster it spread, a dark blue shimmering in the sun, until it became an ocean, separating me from _him_.

When _he_ stepped into the water, I woke once more, a faint cry on my lips that Briden answered with a startled, hiccuped sound.

I looked up. His face hovered an inch away from mine. His breath was foul and rotten as he chortled, “Nevermore, nevermore. Can't go ashore.”

I pushed him off me, and whilst he fell, he resumed laughing and tore at his hair until single strands yielded to the force.

While the sun rose, I paced the cabin with Briden sitting in a corner and alternating between various stages of insanity. I, for one, vibrated with an intensity of a kind I could not name. Come night, I was convinced that I was to play a part in something bigger, something beyond any and all concepts of man: I had beheld _him_ and lived, had followed _his_ call and lived. I could hardly wait to learn about _his_ plans for me.

After feeding Briden and putting him to bed as far away from me as possible, I locked myself in the captain's cabin and, like a moth to flame, found myself drawn to _his_ image in stone that didn't do _him_ justice. _He_ looked too monstrous, too obscene, I thought; _he_ was much finer in appearance, much more _refined_ in existence.

I dreamed myself away without sparing a thought for the curiosity of my change of heart and mind. Where distress beyond comprehension had nigh crushed me a mere day ago, fascination grasped me now. Once more, my fingers followed the outlines of _his_ face while I imagined stone turning to flesh. Soon, I slept again and saw _him_.

_He_ stood in the water—whether the pool I'd created or the ocean where I'd found _him_ , I cannot say—and with a subtle movement of clawed hand beckoned me closer. I obeyed. Although the water reached to _his_ chest, it didn't threaten me as I walked on. Chilly it was, but not unpleasant: refreshing, like when dipping your toes into the Pacific Ocean on a hot summer's day.

I stood before _him_ , and when I looked up then, I trembled with anticipation. All my leftover fear was gone in a snap, as if I'd never known it, when _he_ touched my face with the tip of a claw that, albeit sharp like the devil's tongue, raised nothing but a fierce yearning. Next, _he_ clasped my wrist and pulled me close. _His_ body was warm and strangely _moving_ , just as if something lived _inside_ _him_ ; and maybe that is so.

I rested my forehead on _his_ massive chest and inhaled his scent that was rich with salt and copper and other smells of ocean and earth, some of which I cannot name to this day, although I've known them many nights and will until the end.

I shivered like a leaf in the autumn wind when _he_ took me in _his_ arms and carried me out of the water, towards a stone structure not unlike the one from which _he'd_ ascended at first. There, _he_ lay me down and wrapped _his_ self around me. _His_ feelers, each one of them come to a life seemingly of their own, cascaded from _his_ face and over my skin to reach everywhere, and I, mortal soul, unworthy, produced a sound so full of passion that it almost shames me to think of it now.

Slowly, he shed my clothes with claws and feelers; writhing, wriggling, _they_ went, and oh! such intensity I'd never known! My mind—the part of it that still begged to understand—said feeble words of resistance that never reached my lips.

From afar, as if from another life (and so it must have been), I heard a voice calling out “Nevermore” repeatedly and in such a frenzy that it almost tore me back to the ship and the sea and the insanity that lurks in waking, but no. _He_ knew to keep me anchored in this world of bizarre pleasures of which to think sends jolts of longing through my loins and labors my every breath even now that many weeks have passed.

_He_ cradled me and spread _his_ wings as if to shield me from the eyes of a curious sun trying to get a peek of a simple man being torn apart and put back together all anew: not in the flesh, oh no, but in the very soul.

How I arched into _his_ touch— _his_ many, uncountable touches: soft, smooth strokes and playful nips and oh-so-much more that I could hardly process. Lips, neck, heaving chest— _he_ touched all at once, and further _he_ moved, down, down to the center of the smoldering heat that consumed me until I was on the brink of insanity.

I arched and ached and spread myself open, ready to receive, until _his_ warmth filled me in places I had not known could feel at all. He burnt me and drowned me, and blissful, I let him, clung to him until all my strength left me. I can't say with certainty if I passed out in the dream or woke in reality: it's all a blur, and it's the same somehow.

Back on the ship, I vaguely remember tending to Briden now and then. He would always cower and stare at me and with manic, erratic movements try to push me away. Sometimes he cried, mostly he laughed, but always, his heartbeat chased mine. More and more, reality felt less substantial whereas every moment spent with _him_ was tangible and true.

_We_ walked on foreign shores, I in _his_ shadow and _he_ in my light, and _he_ taught me _his_ language and showed me wonders no mortal could ever dream to behold—and would they, they couldn't understand, just as I had not understood _before_.

I do not recall the night Briden died. I do not recall the storm they later told me almost capsized the ship, either. I only recall _him_ , and when we couldn't be together, I caressed the stone, the only token of _his_ existence in the world of man.

But as all things, good or bad, must come to an end, I had to leave _him_. When the men took me aboard the _Vigilant_ , I woke for the last time. Soon thereafter, I found it hard to make a distinction between the events I had seen with my own eyes and those that had happened in my mind, and neither does it matter: It takes a fool to tell tales like these, and it takes a madman to believe them true.

After a while, I'd even forgotten most of it. It wasn't before my return to Oslo—before another voyage on the sea—that the dreamscapes I had wandered and the pleasures I had come to know returned to my memory. And before long, the man I used to be ceased to exist.

My wife cannot know. No one can just yet. As much as I felt compelled to tell the story of my metamorphosis, this isn't the way to prepare the world for what's coming.

I still hear _him_ call for me, but now, I no longer need to dream. _He_ is with me where I go, just where _he_ belongs. Soon will come the day that _his_ command beckons me to rejoin _him_ as _he_ leaves _his_ drowned, stony bedchamber, and mankind will stand in awe of the beasts unleashed by a union beyond the concept of space and time, beyond the capacity of any human mind.

And _we_ will walk the earth and claim every stone on it, every drop of water, every grain of sand, and every living thing that crawls upon it.

May the stars have mercy on _my_ soul: _My_ heart bears not one ounce of regret.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Beta'd by the wonderful **Moit** , who also made sure all characters were returned unharmed.
> 
> [Visit my LJ-community [Bunny Bash](http://bunnybash.livejournal.com) to leave me a prompt at any time.]
> 
> [Feedback is love.]


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